London's best coffee shops - all the best independent coffee outlets in the capital

Looking for the best coffee shops in London - you've come to the right place - because we've tracked down all the best independent coffee shops the captial has to offer. From Shoreditch Grind to Monmoth and Look Mum No Hands.

The Sunday Club

These caffeine fanatics hold weekly classes in coffee cupping (like wine-tasting, but with coffee) and homebrewing, usually in a designated east London space – or one of your choice. The idea is to bring people together and extend their journey into the world of coffee, with taste deconstruction, bean origins and processing methods, plus various brewing processes.

Spring coffeehouse tour

Before Antipodeans instigated the London coffee revolution, believe it or not, this town had something of its own caffeine culture. This Unreal City tour brings the history of the capital’s coffee houses to life as you amble through the alleys of the capital, learning the importance of the 18th-century coffee shop for trade negotiations, stock selling and general gossip-mongering. Indeed, you’ll visit many of them – and the characters inside – and see the fantastic comparison they make to many of the sterile interiors that exist in London today.

Shoreditch Grind

This indie Antipodean cafe keeps the IT gurus on Silicon Roundabout wired on five-star brew. Drinkers are welcomed by a cinema-style neon sign with changeable innuendo-laden slogans, such as ‘the perfect cupsize’, and the cafe’s wrap- around windows give the effect of a glass box of coffee gorgeousness. The food, too, is worth raving about.

Nude Espresso

This espresso bar, which aims to combine ‘New Zealand ingenuity’ with ‘East End playfulness’, has a sister cafe in Brick Lane and a shop at its roastery site there, where its numerous blends are available to take home. There is a range of blends to try (all are aged seven days). Particularly famed is the signature intense ‘east’ espresso. There’s also a bountiful selection of snacks and indulgences on offer to accompany your coffee. Think homemade chocolate brownies, white chocolate and banana muffins, raspberry cupcakes and some divine spinach and feta scones.

Prufrock

Former world barista champion Gwilym Davies helms the machines in this sparkly little place where drinkers are greeted with a scientific-looking coffee siphon set-up. It also has a barista training centre.

Tapped & Packed

The facade is signless and the interior minimalist, so your focus is on this joint’s brewed coffee – a godsend in an espresso-dominated world. The Souvenir spoons and sugar in treacle tins are wickedly quriky.

Barbican

This pop-up within a gallery is run by two architects – from Germany and Hong Kong – and opens just to capture the morning and lunch trades, while the owners go off to do their jobs in between. That’s commitment. This is London’s first and only dedicated single-origin bean cafe, with brews made with a traditional hand-lever machine from Naples.

Electric Coffee Co

Proving good coffee is available outside Zone One, this cafe has a staunch set of caffeine-loving disciples. It sources beans from south-east London’s Volcano Coffee Works, and serves them from a beautiful Mirage Veloce machine. Here you get the perfect combination of coffee and free wifi, overlooking the lush Haven Green. If nothing else, this is your reason to schlep to the end of the Central line.

Look Mum No Hands

This bike shop-cum-cafe places its emphasis firmly on two wheels (there are big screens for cycling events) and coffee (it uses Square Mile blend and a two-group Marzocco Linea with a modified Anfim grinder, for all you caffiene geeks). On April 24, it will host a lively Rollapaluza challenge, in which baristas will battle it out on a pair of mounted bikes at extremely high speeds, accompanied by music, an MC and cheering crowds. The venue is famed for its salads, pies and cakes. and there is even an in-house beer, Slag.

Ginger & White

We knew somewhere among the dazzling stars of Down Under there would be a grind waving the flag for Britain. This is it. Unshamedly patriotic, Ginger & White, amid the chichi shops of Hamstead Village, uses the ubiquitous Square Mile-roasted beans, and has a conscientious approach to sourcing ingredients locally for its refershingly brief menu. The coffee and cakes are beyond delicious.

Bertie and Boo's

This independently owned cafe won ‘best neighbourhood coffee shop’ in 2009’s Love London awards, and it’s easy to see why. Freshly ground coffee is flanked by fruit smoothies, handmade cakes, muffins and toasted melts. There are old-school desks and red-leather sofas, as well as an outside area stacked with deck chairs to enhance those indulgent chill-out vibes.

Federation Coffee

At the heart of Brixton Village Market, this atmospheric coffee house is a perfect venue for a south- of-the-river cuppa. Coffee is made from beans roasted in its own Brixton roastery and the menu’s bursting.

Flat White

Effortlessly cool, but fiercely professional, this is the place that paved the way for Australian and Kiwi coffee shops in London, heralding the advent of Antipodean cafe culture in Britain. That it still ranks among the best cafes in London is testament to its emphasis on quality. That it champions that holy grail of milky coffee – the flat white – does it no harm either. Its bean blend is custom-made by Square Mile, and you get a perfectly rounded cuppa every time. It’s not a particularly spacious joint, so pop in and out, and take humour in the helpful Aussie and Kiwi ‘flat white’ pronunciations on the wall.